Aprilia RS660 Tech Discussion

I will give that a try, thank you

 

Yea, I was going through the same decision when replacing the SV for endurance racing. I ended up with 2 R7’s which I believe to be the better package for endurance racing. Sometimes simple is better for club level racing. My only concern with the R7 is I don’t think the chassis will ever be at the same level as the Aprilia.

 

So I shimmed the wheel so the gap is. 9, no change. I also replaced the front and rear wheel speed sensor with no improvement. Current best guess is a bad IMU. When I tried the lap timer max lean angle is registered as negative 179 degrees. One more session here at GNF practice, going to try the stock ECU.

 

I saw a lean angle data issue when I put the ABS emulator on. I assume you still have the ABS pump module still installed? There is a little ECU in that thing too which can mess things up too I guess. Good luck.

 

Still have the abs pump installed. Best guess at this point is IMU is bad. Have someone bringing me a spare, I'll report back tomorrow one I've had a chance to try it out. Thanks for all the advice.

 

Find Matt Spicer at Robem and have him take a look with PADS.

 

For anyone that might have the same trouble, the issue was the IMU. Another wera racer was nice enough to loan me his spare, and the bike worked perfectly for 5 sprint races.

 

I’ve put a bunch of track miles and some races on mine since I wrote this.

In round one at Chuck I had both quick shifter malfunctions and overheating problems.

The push rod into the sensor on the quick shifter seems to get stuck. I would have to clean it with some electronic contact cleaner and put just a drop of wd40 on it and that seemed to free it up and get it working again… for a while. I currently have a Spears Racing after market quick shifter I’m planning to install before next round.

on the overheating issue, I’ve got the jet prime high volume water pump and a 2.0 high pressure cap on mine, but the air temp at Chuck that weekend was 109 Sunday afternoon and track temp was over 160. I’m not aware of anyone else overheating, but at those temps it seems unlikely I was the only one. I brought it home and tried to burp the cooling system, but I didn’t get much air out of it. We’ll see what happens at round 3.

as side note, I dropped my gas tank right before round 2 and broke off the plastic elbow the fuel line hooks to. This part is not available you have to replace the whole fuel pump. I wasn’t willing to spend that kind of cash over a plastic elbow so I made some aluminum ones in my machine shop. If somebody else makes the same dumb mistake, I made a couple extras.

 

How did you raise the swingarm mount?
I assume you just flipped the insert which would raise swingarm mounting point 5.5 mm and give more swingarm angle.
How did you get rearset plate to mount with insert flipped?

 

The setup I described in the post you quoted was waaayyyyy off.

Yes, flipped the insert. The rearsets were mounted in a way I would not suggest trying. After doing so, I spoke to Eric Wood about making rearsets that allow for this adjustment, and he was kind enough to canvas his sponsored MA teams. Not a single one was using the flipped insert position, so this is almost certainly not the way to go.

I increased spring rates to .95kg/mm and 850 lbs/in, 149n/mm, lowered the front to stock, and raised the shock to 312mm which all helped considerably. I'm still running wider exits than most twins and more than other RS660s, so I'm going to reduce shock rebound even more or possibly revalve the shim stack.

 

I bet MA guys don’t swap pivot because 5.5 mm is such a drastic change in swingarm pivot height. I bet bike could benefit from a smaller adjustment.
The problem is changing those cups are not MA Twins Cup legal. For club stuff it is legal.

I sent Eric Wood an email yesterday asking if he would make some like the ones that the guy in Italy is making.

 

What do you think @regularguy? Have you played with flipping the pivot point up? I have the bike feeing pretty good for me and I would hesitate to go chasing setup when it feels good and what I need to chase is more rider training.

 

I’ve had several people contact me regarding those aluminum elbows. I’ve already given out the extras I made, but will make some more in a couple weeks when my machines get opened up. I’ll make another thread when I get it done.

as a side note, replacing that elbow is a real pain in the butt. You’re much much better off not breaking it to begin with (obviously), so I’d highly recommend buying the guard that Robem Engineering sells for $30 to protect it. I’m ordering one myself today!

thanks

 

2 years of running at the pointy end of twins cup with the RS660 and we never considered altering the swingarm pivot point. Also, the limited times we had issues with running wide on exits were solved at the back of the bike. The bike has no link so you're preload range is very small. A selection of rear spring rates would be a good thing to have.

 

I probably should have not sold my shock spring compressor.

 

What were the solutions, increase spring rate/preload and reduce rebound? Or did you lengthen the shock as well?

 

that’s a cool looking cover on the counter sprocket!

 

what is your weight and your pace?

 

175lbs, around 15th or so MA pace.

 

What is everyone using for fuel management and tuning on the RS660?

These are the options that I found but not exactly what I am looking for. I really want to do custom maps and flash the OEM ECU.

1. Aprilia Race ECU
2 UPMap (no way to do my own custom maps)
3. Rapid Bike
4. Race ECU w/ UPMap
5. Race ECU w/ Rapid bike.